Fred Savage's New Wonder Years

How the former child star ended up directing the likes of It's Always Sunny and Party Down, and helped build the landscape of modern comedy

My dad and I never spoke of Fred Savage. It was always Kevin, as in Kevin Arnold, protagonist of The Wonder Years. Throughout the late '80s, I'd often spend Wednesday nights sitting way too close to our living room's kerosene heater, the heat scorching my back, as the screen glowed with stories of Kevin, Paul, and Winnie trying to navigate the '60s and make their way through adolescence. Just like I was, just like my father did 20 years earlier. At the time, it was the only show we truly bonded over, and I marveled at how he marveled at it. Conversations around the dinner table dissolved into discussions about the show's treatment of Vietnam. Family gatherings involved him asking whoever would listen if they'd seen the latest episode, postulating theories about who Winnie would end up with. Even if they hadn't, he knew I had, and could count on me to delight in a few inside jokes.

Technically, you could say The Wonder Years was a "period" show, but no one ever talked it in those terms. The first scenes of the pilot make it clear that yes, this show was set in a turbulent time in American history: flashes of bombs going off, Nixon, protest marches, Martin Luther King Jr., and so on dart across the screen in the first few seconds. Narrator Daniel Stern's voiceover immediately comes in and says, "1968. I was 12 years old. A lot happened that year. Denny McLain won thirty-one games. The Mod Squad hit the air. And I graduated from Hillcrest Elementary, and entered junior high school." The images tell you that times are changing, daily, but the voice brings you right into the mindset of a twelve-year-old boy. The biggest worries for a kid growing up in the 'burbs (which are mentioned within the first few minutes) were girls, understanding sex, not understanding older brothers, grumbling fathers, and protective mothers. While I loved Diff'rent Strokes, The Facts of Life, Silver Spoons, and even watched my fair share of Growing Pains, which were all set in the modern era, The Wonder Years was a coming-of-age story in ways TV had never done before.

Recently, though, I've been thinking about Fred Savage. His name is everywhere, suddenly. He keeps popping up as a director in all the television shows I love: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Modern Family, Happy Endings, the late and lamented Party Down. In a fit of nostalgia, I've started thinking about those times in front of the TV, those conversations with my dad. I wondered if I was alone.

"Do you ever have people come up and tell you that they related to their father or son through that show?" I ask Savage.

"Yeah, was that you?"

"How'd you know?"

"Oh, I didn't know. It's just the way you phrased it."

···

Savage was born in Chicago in 1976, the son of a real estate agent and a consultant. He got his big break at an audition at a local community center, where he was scouted for commercials and Sears catalogs. He was the kid in those sweaters—you know the one, posed all '80s-like, with an article of clothing thrown over one shoulder, hooked on the pointer finger.

"The quintessential catalog pose," he describes it. "That's how I knew I was a pro."

He got his first on-screen break filming a commercial for Pac-Man Vitamins. He doesn't have much screen time, but at the end he delivers a cute yet important line aimed directly at the makers of über-popular Flintstones Vitamins: "Goodbye Fred, Hello Pac-Man." Work came steady: an educational film called Dinosaurs!, an episode of the Twilight Zone reboot, a show called Morningstar/Eveningstar which lead to his first real film role, 1986's The Boy Who Could Fly. It was a role as the sick boy who's read to by his grandfather in the cult classic The Princess Bride that's made a lasting impression—but as he explains it, a film with Judge Reinhold called Vice Versa is what got him noticed by those casting The Wonder Years. After landing the lead as Kevin Arnold, he relocated with his family to Los Angeles and committed himself to working throughout his early teens, through his junior year of high school. During his time on The Wonder Years, he received two Emmy nominations and two Golden Globe nominations, as well as universal love from pretty much everyone who watched the show. But when the show ended, things changed. There was no drug problem, no habitual late-night partying on the Hollywood scene, no '90s raver phase. Instead, he more or less left acting to finish his senior year. School dances were attended. He joined the football team (third string, but still). He acted in his high school musical. And he did well, too—after high school, he attended Stanford. It was there that he committed himself to becoming a director—by becoming an English major.

"Ultimately, a director is a storyteller," Savage says. "I wanted to fortify that part of my life as a director, so I thought the best way to do that is to study and learn about the greatest stories ever written."

When Savage talks, his speech is quick and confident, but there's something young at heart in this tone. It's Kevin-esque.

Early in his tenure at Stanford, Savage attended a summer session at USC where he made a sixteen-millimeter film that could be considered his first stab at directing something. It was called Go Fish, a short film about a high-stakes card game.

"It turns out to be a game of Go Fish," he says. "That was my big reveal at the end."

As he finished his time at Stanford, the acting bug was all but gone. He scored a gig on a short-lived NBC comedy called Working, which lasted thirty-five episodes before cancelation. It was there he got his first stab at directing actual people on an actual TV show that the larger public would see.

He did time working on his little brother Ben's sitcom, Boy Meets World, but his first big job came on a Disney Channel show called Even Stevens, which starred a young Shia LaBeouf. He didn't stop at just one Disney Channel show. Next came That's So Raven. Then Hannah Montana. Zoey 101. We could go on.